Author Archive

Kurt Lewin is credited as the founder of social psychology. Social psychology is the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. It may seem pretty obvious to you that Kurt’s influences can be found on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, but Kurt shows up on the web much more than you might think.

One of the most basic social psychology concepts is persuasion.

Persuasion is thought of as a changing of attitudes by presenting information about another attitude. Take these simple screen shots of a product on Amazon.com, without knowing it, you are being overloaded by social psychologies principles of persuasion. Kurt Lewin proposed that an analysis be undertaken in social situations in order to determine whether factors are driving behavior (buying products in this case) or hindering behaviors(bouncing from site in this case).

Length-Implies-Strength Heuristic- Lots of facts, figures and reviews are likely to produce favorable impressions that the product’s is quality is high but also to subconsciously persuade them to buy. In example number one below, Amazon.com mentions that the camera has 7.1 MP and a 3.4x optical zoom.

Balance Theory- People tend to agree with people who they like or who are like them. Balance theory is demonstrated on this page many times by showing consumers what other customers who bought this product liked and looked at, labeled 2 above.

Consensus-Implies-Correctness Heuristic- If a majority of people have the same opinion, then it must be correct. This heuristic seems to be the most popular principle of persuasion used on pages like these. 1,154 customer reviews, star ratings, review charts, 80 people even reviewed a review. Examples of Consensus-Implies-Correctness heuristic are labeled with 3’s above.

There are many more social psychology principles that can be applied all over the web to many more sites than you think. Although Kurt did not work directly with the principles of persuasion, he paved the way for basic social psychology principles to be applied in modern ways to the web.

Have you ever needed the answer to a question immediately? Ever been frustrated because you are away from a computer or Google is just not producing the results to the search you are looking for? Now the answers are at your fingertips anytime and anywhere. I recently discovered the site www.chacha.com. Cha Cha is a service that will answer any question you ask within minutes of asking.

Q: What is a baby fox called? A: A kit

Q: What is the name of the red teletubby? A: Po

Q: What should I blog about? A: You can blog about recent news, political figures, sports, actors and actresses or the war.

And the hardest question yet….

Q: What does Engauge Digital do? A: Engauge Digital, formerly Spunlogic, is an internet company that takes their client’s ideas and expands them to attract consumers.

You can get any question your heart desires answered by visiting the site or by sending a text to chacha (242242). The best part about the whole service is its FREE! The next time you are in a store wondering which brand cat food is the best to buy (which by the way is Natural Balance Ultra Formula according to Cha cha), just shoot a text to cha cha and it will promptly send you the answer, right back! Check it out and see if you can stump it.

Many sports fans like me are die hard supporters of their team. You love your team whether they are in the height of a winning season or in the depths of a very bad season. Being an Alabama Crimson Tide Fan and an Atlanta Falcons fan I have seen more than my fair share of losing seasons.

One of the most frustrating events that takes place during a winning season is the emergence of the ‘Fair Weather Fans.’ A fair weather fan is someone who supports a team as soon as the team has won enough games in a season to have the playoffs in sight. You might be able to recognize these fans at games or in daily conversations. For example, you might find yourself talking football with your grandmother who usually tells you to turn that sports junk off and put the parade on TV. You might even find yourself at a game with your boss who is yelling “Swish” when your team kicks a field goal.

The truth is that winning is fun. Everyone likes to win and everyone likes to be a fan of a winning team. It’s very hard to be a fan of a team who hasn’t won a game all season (sorry Detroit Lions fans). The proof that winning is viral is in the analytics. With the conviction of Michael Vick, the sudden resignation of Bobby Petrino and starting 3 different quarterbacks, the Atlanta Falcons 2007 season was not as successful as most fans would have liked it to have been. However, with some awesome pickups in the off season and a surprisingly wonderful draft pick the Atlanta Falcons have the twinkle of the playoffs in their eyes nearing the end of the 2008 season. The following chart is the analytics for one year at life.atlantafalcons.com. Life.atlantafalcons.com is a fan generated site with content like blogs and message boards.

This data seems to suggest that the fans have picked up on this winning trend. You can clearly see how low the visitor rate was at the end of the 2007 season when the falcons had a 4-12 record. The site saw increased visitation with the hiring of Mike Smith on January 24th and the drafting of Matt Ryan on April 28th. This year the traffic is substantially higher with the falcons having won twice as many games in this season so far (the Falcs are currently 9-5).

The best thing about having viral seasons like the 2008 Atlanta Falcons Season is knowing one fair weather fan is converted into a lifelong fan every day.

Do you ever wish that all of the things you desire could be found on a “one-stop shop” site? Lucky for virtual world enthusiasts, I think I might have found the one-stop jackpot of virtual worlds. Small Worlds is a 3D virtual environment that combines multiple virtual media forms into one cohesive online world. Small Worlds runs in your web browser, so there is no downloading of software onto your desktop. This will appeal to many people who do not want to clutter up their memory by downloading virtual world software.

Because Small Worlds is targeted towards preteens and up, it is likely that many of its users have had prior experience with Webkinz. Similar to Webkinz, users have the ability to design a living space for their avatar, adorn the living space with furniture and various décor, and invite friends to check out their virtual home. However, Small Worlds has differentiated itself from other virtual worlds by embracing the concept of integration and taken virtual living spaces one step further. Avatars may invite friends to watch YouTube on virtual televisions, view Flickr pictures on virtual picture frames and listen to last.fm on virtual radios that decorate your avatar’s living space.

While still in beta testing, content in the Small Worlds virtual environment is created by site administrators, though Small Worlds representatives have hinted that users will have the ability to create and modify content in the future. Just like in Second Life, users will be able to create places, clothing, vehicles….the possibilities are endless. Similar to other virtual worlds, users will be able to sell the virtually created content to other online avatars to make real world money.

As if those two worlds integrated weren’t enough, Small Worlds also plans on being a virtual world recognized for social interaction, casual gaming and media consumption. Like I said before, Small Worlds sounds like the “one-stop shop” for everything you might need from a virtual world. The only complaint I have about the Small Worlds Beta, is the navigation within the virtual world. All navigation is done by mouse click and is sometimes hard to see where you are going or to click the desired location within the virtual environment. However, the navigation is a small obstacle for the Small Worlds creators to overcome.

After spending a long day navigating through Small Worlds watching YouTube videos and chatting with friend avatars, there’s nothing I like more than relaxing in my virtual hot tub with my dog Patty Mayonnaise nearby.

Online worlds have attracted big business. Marketing and advertising inside virtual worlds has taken on new and innovative strategies, as more and more companies are establishing an interactive presence “in world.” The Engauge Digital Behavioral Research Department loves to conduct research in a range of worlds – so I thought it would be a fun idea to explore Webkinz.

If you aren’t already familiar, Webkinz is an online world created by Ganz for kids ages 5-13. Webkinz has an estimated 530,733 in world visitors everyday. In terms of US visitors, Webkinz has seen tremendous traffic and growth in comparison to other virtual worlds.

Ask any child you know if they have heard of Webkinz and you will most likely get an earful about their specific Webkinz avatar: born from a real-life stuffed animal that translates into a digital avatar with its own personality and hobbies. The avatars – whose stuffed counterparts are purchased in stores by parents – have the ability to chat, make friends, get jobs, build homes, and play games with others, all in the comfort of a supervised and secure environment that caters to parental concerns. And of course the in-store purchasing power is not limited to only stuffed animals – parents and their children can dress their stuffed avatars in clothes or give them Ganz brand lip balm, and all have digital codes to convert the real life products into interactive versions for their pet. Webkinz and Webkinz related products are well sought after gifts for children.

So in researching this whole Webkinz world as opportunity space for our clients, I naturally have my own avatar – a friendly, opportunistic, sunglass wearing chicken. He’s got his own place, complete with a bed, couch and a couple of cacti and it turns out that he apparently really wants a toy cell phone. He’s got several friends and even has a job where he earns his Kinzcash (Webkinz currency) to buy things like smoking hot sunglasses or furniture for his room.

It appears that with so many visitors to this online world, that Webkinz and the Webkinz generation will be the future of other online worlds. It will be interesting to see how the world grows and evolves as the “Webkinz generation” grows into adults. Will this generation transform the way we look at virtual worlds in the future?